Rachel Maclean – The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway…

11 July to 10 October 2015

Exploring themes of class, aspiration and childhood, this solo exhibition by Glasgow-based artist Rachel Maclean presented her recent two screen video installation Please, Sir… (2014) and, for the first time in a gallery setting, a new six screen video installation Let it Go! (2015).

Shot entirely using a green-screen, Maclean’s work is a hyper-real, shape-shifting realm in which an Adidas-striped Oliver Twist mugs a Tudor Prince at knife point, a pauper steals £10 from the pocket of Simon Cowell, and a vagrant youth is offered heroin by a well-dressed servant.

Set in a bleak yet seductive urban landscape, the work pulls between fantasy and social realism, making everyday stereotypes grotesque and uncomfortable for viewers to process.

Maclean is the only star in her films, and mimes to audio plundered from a range of pop cultural sources including Britain’s Got Talent, Jeremy Kyle and The Apprentice. Her colourful characters wear heavy make-up, prosthetic noses and fake teeth, and sit somewhere between a Hogarth satire and the cheap-plastic monstrosities of a fancy-dress shop.